State senator looks to codify neighborhood names

A newly elected state senator who is opposed to calling southern Harlem "SoHa" resurrected a bill this week to punish real estate firms that try to rename city neighborhoods.

State Sen. Brian Benjamin introduced the Neighborhood Integrity Act, a rehash of legislation first introduced by now Rep. Hakeem Jeffries in 2011 that sought to block real estate companies from inventing neighborhoods. In May Crain'sreported the latest outrage over attempts to rebrand southern Harlem as SoHa and examined the various forces that have shaped neighborhoods over time.

Benjamin's bill would slap real estate companies with fines if they attempt to make up names, which is often done to shop apartments to New Yorkers who might not otherwise want to live in a particular area. If the law passes, new identifiers could be used only if approved by the city.

But the bill is not as simple as it might sound. For starters, it seeks to stop any deviation from "traditional boundaries," but neighborhood borders are constantly shifting and have generally evolved as a matter of collective opinion and not political diktat. The legislation also doesn't specify whose definition of "traditional" would apply. And officially codifying neighborhood names would offer no guarantees that the people who live in them would follow suit.

An official explanation accompanying the bill illustrates the problem: Benjamin criticizes real estate brokers for making up the name Greenwood Heights in Brooklyn, yet Greenwood Heights was used to refer to part of the borough in the early 1900s. Does that make it a traditional boundary or a broker invention?

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